General Editing Guide
Category: Documents This is a set of parameters and guidelines to help make sure everything is in order and organized. Please follow these rules when editing to ensure that people can find your articles and that they do not require heavy editing to conform to the site. First, please make an account using your username from the site. That makes it easy to track you so we know you are contributing to the effort. Members who help develop this Wikia will be rewarded on the site with money or other perks. Content Please make sure that all spelling and capitalization is correct. If you need, use a word processor and if you don't want to do that, Firefox 2 comes with a word processor that is very handy. On capitalization, please make sure to spell the Force with a capital "F" if you are talking about the mystical energy field that surrounds all life. Also make sure to capitalize proper nouns like names and places or events. Do not edit articles that are other people's biographies, even if you see a mistake. Unless it is spelling or capitalization, do not touch other biographies. That is the job of the administrators to do. The same goes for official battles and events or things that you did not have a specific part in. For instance, Jedi members should not edit Ni'novia because that does not pertain to them. If you see an error or wish to add something, PM Eliana/Trivas on the site and he will put it up. Article Titles When making your own bio, do not include any titles. There should be no "Lord" "Darth" "Master" "Admiral" or anything in front of your names. That causes great confusion with linking since people tend to change their titles as they gain rank and it also is a hassle to try to remember what rank everyone put. That does not mean you cannot create redirections to your article so that if someone puts in "Darth Sam", it would go to article "Sam". Regarding battles and other events. Please do not make up a name for an event unless it is within your own character's background. For instance, if someone were doing an article on a conflict in the past of their own private fanon planet, they can name it whatever they want. If it was something on the site, especially an official RPG, leave it to the administrators to decide the name. That way, everything can be kept in order and people won't be making up three different names for the same thing. Linking Look around at the other articles. If you see that something you are writing about has an article, please link to it. One of the best features on Wikia is that you have links already within the article to quick reference. A red link on a Wikia indicates that there is no article that links to. A blue one indicates that there is an article for that link. To link, just put double brackets around the word provided it is the exact same spelling and capitalization. If you want to put a link around a word or phrase that is not exact, there is a simple way to do it. Look at the examples below. 1. Areltsi is the Nymean capital. 2. Areltsi is the Nymean capital. 1. That battle was the last battle fought in the war. 2. That battle was the last battle fought in the war. The first line is what you would type in, the second is what Wikia will do with it. The vertical line (right above or beside the enter key) separates the two. Everything that is before the vertical line is the exact link, everything after is what is shown. It is okay to have red links in your articles. Sometimes, you have the intention of going back and making those articles, but you don't have the time to do it right then. That is fine and you can do that as much as you want. Please do not link to every single linkable word in your article. If you use one name more than once, only make a link for the first time that name appears. Unless there is a great gap between occurrences, do not double link, it is sloppy and makes the article look bad. Categories It is critical that you put articles in the right category. That helps people put them into context as well as looking them up easier. It also is key to keeping this Wikia organized and formatted correctly. Please place the categories in the top of the article when editing and put them in alphabetical order (except the Era below) just for easy reference. To add a category to an article, simply put Category: Category Name Here. Putting that in two brackets is what links the article to the proper category. Categories are case sensitive, meaning that if you do not have the capitalization worked out, it won't work. Check on the bottom of the finished article to see if you entered it right. If you did, the link should be blue. If you didn't, the link will be red and you need to figure out why. The categories are displayed at the bottom of the article when finished editing, but should be at the first thing visible when editing. You need to put what other categories the article falls under. That depends on the article. Below is a list of the categories and the sub-categories. In each, there is a description of what type of articles fits into the category. Please list the categories in alphabetical order. That just makes it easier for people to check and navigate and makes it uniform. These are the major categories. There are smaller ones as well, but these are the main ones. *Category: Biographies *Category: Documents *Category: Fan Fiction *Category: Official Events *Category: Organizations *Category: Places *Category: Planets *Category: Ranks and Titles *Category: Ships *Category: Unofficial Events Do not create your own category or sub-category. Some groups such as the Nymean Ascendancy or Siron's Organization have sub-categories due to the number of articles that relate to them. The base number for getting a sub-category for an organization is 10 articles. Reach that with all the articles relating to one aspect and ask the administration here if they would open a sub-category for you. Do not include the main category in your list of categories. You can put multiple sub-categories in your bio. For instance, if you are making a biography for a dead Jedi CM, do not put the "Biography" category in your article. Just put the "Jedi Biographies", "Former Jedi Council Members", and "Deceased Members" categories in your article. If you are making an organization that is under the banner of the Sith of either era, please do not put "Organizations" as a category. Just put "Sith Organizations" as your category and include any sub-category that applies. Headers Another good feature of Wikias is the headers. They allow for quick navigation of long articles. In case you do not know, the bold word "Header" just above this sentence is an example of a header. Headers are what offer the quicklink box at the top of this article. That is all done automatically and you do not have to set it up. You can make headers by placing equal signs before and after the word or words you want to make into a header. You must put the same number of equal signs on each side to make a header. The fewer the number, the "bigger" the header will be. The more you put on each side, the smaller and more minor the header. Please do not use single equal sign headers, double and triple equal sign headers are preferred as they are not so gaudy and flow easier for the reader. Bullets and Lists In Wikia formatting, you must put two lines between any paragraph for it to register as a paragraph. If you just hit enter once, it will connect the two. There needs to be one blank line between every paragraph. For lists, you can do many things. The most common is the simple bullets that are made with asterisks (*) before the words or sentences you want listed. This creates a simple bulleted list like the categories above. To have "indented" lists, add an asterisk or two. Like with headers, the more the "smaller" the bullet.